The Sum of Bravery
by Faxisthegreatest123
Summary: "Forty thousand brothers could not... make up my sum" - Shakespeare's Hamlet. Haunted by his greatest act of failure, Fang must come to terms with the events of Maximum Ride: Forever. Diverging into uncharted territory, Max must come to terms with all that lies ahead. Fluffy one-shot taking place between epilogues of the ninth Maximum Ride. Spoilers. Rated T for minor adult themes.


**Okay readers. Just a sweet, fluffy read for you. I have a soft spot for the last Maximum Ride (I'm talking** _ **Forever**_ **, not** _ **Nevermore**_ **), especially the epilogues. They're sweet and perfect and wrap up the series in a wonderful and hopeful fashion.**

 **Sorry, I'm totally gushing. All that is to say that the only thing lacking in those epilogues is Fang… his reaction to Max's news (beside the almost-falling-from-the-sky part), and just how he feels about it in general. So, with that in mind, I came up with a little something, just for you guys. I hope you enjoy.**

 **First, two things (assuming you haven't skipped this Author's Note entirely). 1. My disclaimer: I do not own any rights at all to these characters. Their fates were up to JP and company to decide. And finally, 2. The fic takes place during the events of** _ **Maximum Ride: Forever**_ **. There will be spoilers if you haven't read it yet; continue at your own risk. If you** _ **haven't**_ **read the book yet, and** _ **don't**_ **care about spoilers, read on, and hopefully you'll be able to catch up on what you've missed. Happy reading!**

Fang and I laid as we always did, wrapped up in each other, legs and feet tangled together. The many months spent apart, the pieces of our lifetimes nearly squandered to nothing, had not changed the way that we fit. His body was the perfect complement to all of my curves, even the little baby bump that persisted in its daily growth. His fingers were currently splayed there, the digits carefully arranged into a shield, protecting baby and me from whatever may come.

He sighed contently into my ear. It was a sound I had scarcely heard before today, but one that he could not help since my big reveal.

I shifted just a little, trying hard as I could to fight the sleep that was beginning to overtake me. There was a question hanging off my lips; it felt too important to leave unasked. "What are you thinking?"

His reply took so long that I feared sleep had already taken him. Finally, as he shifted just the tiniest bit closer, cradled the baby and I just a hair tighter, he let out the softest string of words. "I am so… incredibly… scared. But so happy, too. Happy to be alive. To be in this moment with you. And to be in this moment with our child." The last was just a whisper. A caressing breeze as we both sailed into the oblivion of sleep. "Our child."

As quickly as I had fallen asleep, I was jarred awake by rash movements to my left. Panic rose instantly, tensing every external piece of myself. My heart, my child both squirmed with all their strength.

After several terse breaths, I dared to peak open an eye, to look at the man who thrashed next to me. There was a point when Fang had disentangled himself from me, and now he kicked and swung at the air as if our lives were in danger. Then came his empty howl of pain, of fear, of everything he refused to feel.

He jolted up with a start, his chest heaving and his skin dripping cold sweat. As he reoriented himself to reality, his eyes darted about, feral as a wild cat before finally calming and settling on my own.

"Sorry." He scooted himself up and off the bed, began pacing around in our small make-shift bedroom. "Didn't mean to wake you."

The combination of screaming and pacing was forcing panic to rise in me again. "Come lie down again. Fang? At least come by me. Sit down and decompress."

It was no use; he continued his frantic movements, not slowed one bit by my insistence. He got like this, sometimes. Like if he dared to stop, he'd crumble. Wither away to nothing. Or worse, he'd be helpless to stop the tears. He'd be reduced to a normal person, with normal emotions.

With great difficulty, I scooted myself into a sitting position, wrapped my arms tightly around my baby. They, too, refused to be still. "Fang, please."

I let my head fall back against the hard rock behind me. I'd talk him out of this, one way or another. "It was a nightmare, wasn't it?"

He gave no indication either way. "Where were you? At the School? The E-Shaped house?" A horrid thought occurred. "In Alaska? With the Erasers?"

His feet momentarily paused their pursuit. I was on the right track. "Was Jeb there, too? With his cocky little grin and his-?"

Fang stopped completely, his face dimming several shades. "I never… How did…? I don't under-" I didn't think it were possible, but Fang paled even further, nearly passed out right there. It took all of his dignity just to shuffle the few feet to the bed, throw himself down and shield his eyes with his forearm.

Shame and embarrassment came off of him in waves, threatening to drown us both. "You saw. But, you weren't- Oh, God!" The sound he made was almost as painful, as sharp as the howl from within his nightmare. "You were there!"

I moved toward him slowly, as if approaching a wild animal. In our 15 years spent thrown together, I had never seen him so helpless. Even at the hands of the enhanced Erasers, Fang had been calm and collected.

Once at his side, I reached out a hand, laid my palm flat against his chest. He did not flinch, or at all acknowledge the gesture.

"We were several hundred miles apart when…" Tears were already clouding my vision, but I could not, would not let them fall. Not yet. "I was trying to track you down, but never quite made it. I did eventually catch up with Angel and Dylan. They told me that you had… that you were…"

Fang shifted, one arm moving to uncover his face, the other moving until his hand was covering mine, our fingers intertwining overtop his heartbeat. In the small gesture, he leant me the strength to go on.

"I didn't believe them. It was impossible for the world to still be turning without you in it." Now the tears began, salty drops falling in sheets down my face. I did my best to weep quietly, for both of our sakes. "Then Dylan showed me the video, and I knew it had to be true."

I looked into Fang's eyes, expecting to see a blank canvas, that stony wall that he always held. Instead there was slow-burning anger, a deep rage just beginning to boil over.

"There was a _video_? And he _showed it to you_?"

"No! It wasn't like that!" I pressed my hand harder against Fang's chest, trying my best to keep him from jumping into attack-mode. "He was a Horsemen; he had to record all of the deaths, even the ones he faked. He didn't mention the video with the intension of showing me; I kind of forced him to. It was the only way I could… believe it. Come on, Fang. You know how stubborn I can be."

He did not even crack a smile. "I am so sorry, Max."

I grounded out a laugh. The sound died halfway through the air. "Sorry for what? The video? That wasn't your fault. For dying? Fang, you fought harder than I ever thought possible. You were-"

Realization dawned on me. His shame and embarrassment? A direct result of the fight in Alaska. He thought he had lost too easily; he thought it made him a coward, a weakling. He thought the very opposite of everything that I knew without a doubt.

There was nothing that I could think to do but kiss those trembling lips, chase the pain and worry and heartache the only way I knew how.

So I did exactly that. Starting on the left side, I kissed my way across his face, around and toward his lips, muttering what I could between breaths. "You are. Strong. Brave. The best I've. Ever seen. Don't ever. Let anyone tell you," and in the smallest, tiniest gap between our mouths, I finished my speech. "Differently."

Things grew heated as we melted into one another, both forgetting about time or circumstance or any other unpleasant business. For a suspended moment, Fang and I were the only people in existence.

Until a little reminder kicked me from the inside.

Fang, who's hand had crept to cover the tender flesh of my stomach, pulled back abruptly, his face a picture of awe and wonder. A slow smile spread from dimple to dimple, a sight so rare that I nearly did a double take.

With some gentle urging he cupped either side of the expanding bump, his fingertips soft in their perusing. About 30 suspenseful seconds passed before our baby moved again, his or her tiny toes nudging us both.

Fang turned his wide, deep brown eyes to me. "You call me brave, and strong. What about you?"

My spine bristled at the many implications. "What about me?"

"You're carrying a child into this big, uncertain world. We have little help, very few adults who have been through this. And yet here we are. Here you are. Calm."

"I'm anything but calm, Fang." For some unknown reason, I wouldn't let this down without a fight. "I'm in a constant state of panic. I have all these people willing to help me, and yet…"

I had to back up, take a second to get my mind on straight. The path that I was headed down was very narrow, very dark. The lowest points of my life, though there hadn't been too many high points to balance it out.

"All these people, and yet the possibility of raising a child, _our child_ , without you…" The tears came in waves. The floodgates had been opened, no sign of slowing in the foreseeable future. "You don't know ho-how many times I almost drop- I almost willingly dropped from the sky. Ho-how many days I went without eating, without sleeping… I am not brave. I'm scared senseless."

He moved to sit next to me, began rubbing reassuring circles into my shoulder. For a long time there were only my sobs to lessen the silence. It could have been minutes or hours before he finally whispered, "We'll get through."

The gravel inflections of his voice placed me back to those frightening times, to the one thing that kept me from falling into despair. It was a just a whisper, as his words had been. "Every time I was set to self-destruct, I imagined you were there, saying 'not yet'. It's the only reason I made it. Somewhere I knew that, even in death, you'd find your way back to me."

He leaned in to kiss me, brushed my tears away with his thumbs while leaving the ghost of his own against my cheeks. We settled back into the mattress, our bodies melded the way that they had been before our first round of sleep.

His breath was in my ear, tickling a path down my neck. "'Forty thousand brothers/could not with all their quantity of love/make up my sum.'"

"Which is to say…?"

He chuckled, a short and savory sound. "I love you. Always and always."

There was no end to the smile that carved its way up my face. A blush crept to my nose and cheeks, not that he could see it, thank God.

"I love you, too." A thought occurred before I could stop it. "Who wrote that? Faulkner? Rembrandt?"

"Rembrandt," he sighed, a wicked laugh lingering just beyond, "was a painter." Before I could pull away in embarrassment, Fang brought me closer, set his mouth against my ear in a way that pushed sparks all the way to my toes. "It was Shakespeare. Hamlet, upon discovering Ophelia's suicide."

I made a non-committal sound in the back of my throat. Then, just as sleep was overcoming me yet again, I called out a soft sigh of Fang's name.

With his acknowledgement, I asked, "When did you read Shakespeare?"

His good-natured, absolutely breathtaking, utilized far-too little chuckle was the melody that helped drift us into blissful sleep.

 **Okay, I should probably do a second disclaimer: I do not own the rights to "Hamlet"; those belong to beloved Shakespeare. I do, however, love the use of the quote in here… it's almost like I wrote it in, or something.**

 **Anyway, thanks for sticking with me. Feel free to message me with any questions or comments, or if you really,** _ **really**_ **want to discuss** _ **Forever**_ **, or any Maximum Ride book. (I just love them!)**

 **Oh, and don't forget to review! You know you want to!**

 **Read and write on,**

 **~Faxisthegreatest123~**


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